2/27/12 1:51 PM EST

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer isn’t so sure tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help ease rising gas prices is a good idea.

Despite calls from lawmakers in his own party to open up the reserve, the Maryland Democrat said he's skeptical that doing so would lower prices at the pump much. Speculation in the oil markets, not a shortage of supply, is driving the recent spike in gas price, Hoyer added.

“Historically, I have been reticent about using the [Strategic Petroleum Reserve] in what I believe to be non-emergency times,” Hoyer said Monday morning. “Emergency times are when supply is disrupted. Very frankly, supply is not getting disrupted and [there are] no lines at the gas tanks at anywhere in the country, as far as I know.”

Three House Democrats – Vermont Rep. Peter Welch, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey – last week urged President Barack Obama to open up the SPR, which holds roughly 700 million barrels of oil.

“Releasing even a small fraction of that oil could once again have a significant impact on speculation in the market place and on prices,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “It would also stand as a reminder to markets that the United States is ready to employ an aggressive and effective SPR drawdown policy if needed.”

Hoyer acknowledged that it is “very difficult” for Congress to act immediately to lower gas prices and that lawmakers are in ongoing discussions about how to do so, including tapping the SPR. Gas is currently averaging $3.70 per gallon, according to AAA.

3/7/11 3:30 PM EST

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is going green, commenting on oil prices and getting parochial all at the same time.

The Republican senator -- no. 3 in the GOP hiearchy -- walked into a car dealership Monday in Tennessee and drove away in a brand new LEAF, the plug-in car made by Nissan and manufactured in Tennessee.

He even used his publicity moment -- his office enclosed pictures of him "fueling" the car -- to tout his purchase as good for national security.

"Plugging in my new LEAF will give me the patriotic pleasure of not sending money overseas to people who are trying to blow us up," said Alexander in a statement after picking up his new black car in the morning.

Alexander, a vocal GOP supporter of electric cars, argues that plug-in vehicles are the best way for the country to avoid relying on foreign oil and climbing gas prices, which hit $4 per gallon across the country this week. In the past, the Senate's third-ranking Republican has sponsored legislation to promote and speed up manufacturing of electric vehicles.

Before he hopped in his new 2011 Nissan LEAF, Alexander drove a Toyota Prius that he converted into an electric car for two years. However, the new Nissan LEAF is made in Tennessee, according to the senator's office.

2/11/11 11:43 AM EST

Retired Coast Guard Commander Thad Allen urged House Republicans Friday to invest more money in the prevention of oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

Allen, who has served as the government’s point man on the spillI looked this up. This appears to be how he’s been described., said that a federal program created after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill didn’t have any scientific research that federal agencies could use to stop the oil gushing out of BP’s well. He said that the program didn’t have enough funding to produce research on oil spill response.

Allen told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation that they should boost funding to the program. The Interagency Coordinating Committee on Oil Pollution Research, which the Coast Guard oversees, funds and conducts research on how federal agencies can respond to oil spills. It received earmarks for four years after the Exxon Valdez accident, but hasn’t been regularly funded since 1995.

“The ICCOPR must receive permanent funding for research and development through annual distributions,” Allen said. He didn’t name a specific amount of money.

The transportation panel is facing several requests for more funding even as Republicans try to drastically reduce federal spending. Earlier this week, the top administrator at the Federal Aviation Administration asked the committee to fund technology that would prevent accidental plane crashes.

12/16/10 6:05 PM EST

Leading House climate skeptic Jim Sensenbrenner appears to have landed a perch to lead investigations into global warming science.

The Wisconsin Republican is set to become the vice chairman of the House Science Committee under incoming Chairman Ralph Hall (R-Texas), Hall told POLITICO Thursday.

“With his background, his insistence, he can do the mean things that we don’t want to do,” Hall said. “I’m a peaceful guy; he likes combat.”

Sensenbrenner, who has served as the top Republican on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming since 2007, tried to keep the panel alive to investigate the Obama administration’s global warming policies, but was shot down by GOP leadership.

Sensenbrenner agreed to take the No. 2 spot on the Science Committee in exchange for Hall’s backing in two years when his term limit runs out, according to a Republican select committee spokesman.

As one of the Republicans leading the charge against the science underpinning the Obama administration’s climate policies, Sensenbrenner is expected to take a lead role on investigations.

“I’ve had a reputation of really being a tiger on oversight,” he said in September.

Elsewhere on the Science Committee, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) will become chairman of the Investigations and Oversight subpanel next year.

3/9/10 5:50 PM EST

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- the Republican of the moment at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. -- was fired up following today's climate change meeting with President Obama and a bipartisan collection of his colleagues.

He was especially impressed by Obama's commitment to a comprehensive approach and urged his GOP brethren to follow suit, if everything worked out.

2/19/10 9:29 PM EST

Eight Democratic Senators from coal states are mounting a serious challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency's landmark ruling that CO2 is a pollutant and demanding a delay in enforcing anti-global warming regulations against polluters.

In a letter Friday to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.V.) requests details on how and when the agency would implement regulations on facilities and asks Jackson to " suspend EPA regulations for industrial facilities so Congress can consider" comprehensive energy and climate legislation.

Rockefeller is drafting a bill to prevent the EPA from moving quickly with a crackdown. The letter comes at a time when Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski has been seeing support for her own amendment blocking the so-called "endangerment" finding, which was announced just before the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Seven other Democratic senators signed on, including Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Mark Begich of Alaska, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Carl Levin of Michigan, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Max Baucus of Montana.

UPDATE: Seth Oster, Associate Administrator for Public Affairs: "We received the Senators' letter late Friday evening, and we appreciate their questions and the dialogue. We'll provide a response early this week."

Excerpts:

“At a time when so many people are hurting, we need to put the decisions about our energy future in to the hands of the people and their elected representatives — especially on issues impacting clean coal. EPA actions in this area would have enormous implications and these issues need to be handled carefully and appropriately dealt with by the Congress, not in isolation by a federal environmental agency,” wrote Rockefeller.

“We remain concerned about the possible impacts on American workers and businesses in a number of industrial sectors, along with the farmers, miners, and small business owners who could be affected as your agency moves beyond automobile emissions standards to implement regulations to curtail GHG pollution from stationary sources.

“We have a responsibility to the workers and industries in our states to address both your agency’s timetable for the implementation of these stationary source regulations, and what you intend the exact requirements for businesses to be.

“The president and you have been explicit in calling on Congress to pass comprehensive legislation that would enhance our nation’s energy and climate security. We strongly believe this is ultimately Congress’s responsibility, and if done properly, [it] will create jobs, spur new clean energy industries, and greatly advance the goal of U.S. energy independence. If done improperly, these opportunities could be lost.”

12/18/09 12:15 PM EST

12/18/09 11:39 AM EST

[A Thrush and Roug co-production — mostly Roug]

The three first speakers at Friday's COP 15 plenary session — China, Brazil and the US — each had their political points to make, but if you listened carefully each offered clues to a possible deal along the lines of the one emerging at a glacial pace here.

[How slow? The U.N. has reportedly asked world leaders, including President Obama to stay a little longer to continue meetings.]

With the caveat that monitoring can’t be intrusive or offend Chinese sovereignty, Chinese Premiere Wen Jiabao opened the door on greater transparency, using his speech to offer a small of olive branch — saying locally-collected emissions reports would be open for international inspection.

That's probably not enough to satisfy the US, but it moves Beijing off its position of no, no and more no.

“In tackling climate change we need to take a long-term perspective but it is important to focus on the present,” said Wen. "We should give people hope.”

"Hope."

Get it?

Just before the start of the talks, China pledged to lower greenhouse gas intensity from between 40 percent and 45 percent per unit of their gross economic output by 2020, a so-called “carbon intensity target” that was criticized for tying emissions to economic activity.

Speaker number two, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” Da Silva, not a traditional American ally, tried to bridge the chasm between the G77 + China, a thankless but essential task.

“It is true that those countries, who will contribute [money] have the right to demand transparency; they have the right to demand compliance,” he said. “But it is also true that we need to be very careful with this intrusion and intervention in the developing countries.”

President Obama's speech seemed like a war cry, but it was accompanied by an eagerness to hash things out in private. POTUS didn’t spell out any new specifics, but he was still touting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge that the US would help raise $100 billion for the developing world.

And although he conditioned it on transparency, it served a powerful political purpose: Forcing the US to get specific (sort of) on cash.

“Mitigation. Transparency. And financing. It is a clear formula — one that embraces the principle of common but differentiated responses and respective capabilities. And it adds up to a significant accord — one that takes us farther than we have ever gone before as an international community,” Obama said.

David Doniger, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center, pointed out that the U.S., China and Brazil represented the three major factions at the talks, with the US as the
industrialized power, China representing emerging economies and Brazil as the country in between the poor and the developing world.

“The Chinese have bargained very hard,” he said. “It would be disappointing if that was not negotiable. This doesn’t seem to be unbridgeable gap.”

One hurdle to a deal has been the structure of the so-called Group of 77, which includes developing countries and China. Within the group, China is increasingly at odds with the other countries and, although the group has largely stayed together during the talks, cracks are showing.

Clinton’s proposal to raise $100 billion the developing was good politics across the board, but its longest-lasting impact may have been to further pry China away from poorer members of the group, who are lot more reluctant to leave cash on the table than Beijing.

And brings us to the counterintuitive reality emerging from Copenhagen: Even if nothing gets resolved, a lot may have been accomplished.

“Whatever happens here,” Doniger said, “There is a lot of progress that shouldn’t get obscured by the way this process works,” said Dan Joergensen, a European delegate: “China is also hit by climate change, so they should have an interest in solving the problem.”

12/18/09 8:40 AM EST

POLITICO's Louise Roug reports that Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, was the lead-in Speaker to President Obama -- but his address was far more warmly received by the audience of international leaders.

When he was done, Danish President Lars Rasmussen, the official head of COP 15, smiled and said,
"Thank you for your very wise remarks, which proves that you are one of the wise man required to" solve climate change.

Lula, as he's universally known, expressed his pique with the grinding pace of talks, saying it reminded him of his days as a labor negotiator wrangling with management.

"I am a little bit frustrated,” said , with customary bluntness, as he addressed the world leaders in Copenhagen. “I had the pleasure of participating last night until 2 am in a meeting…Very prominent figures of the political world was in that meeting," he said.

“For a long time we have been discussing the climate change issue, and more and more we see the problem is even more severe than we could ever have imagined.”

He wanted to leave Copenhagen with a meaningful document. “But I’m not sure if some angel or some wise man will come down...and put in our minds the intelligence that we lacked up until now,” he said, to laughter and applause in the media center.

“I believe in miracles and we need a miracle,” he said.

The presidents and premiers had waited for more than an hour in the festively decorated plenary room, as President Obama was holed up in down-to-the-wire negotiations.

“At this very moment, billions of people are following close what is happening here in Copenhagen,” said Chinese Premiere Wen Jiabao, who was first up and spoke before both Lula and Obama.

"China takes climate change very seriously,” the premier said but since the country was currently undergoing "accelerated industrialization,” it confronted special difficulties in terms of emissions reduction.

In tackling climate change, he added, "we need to take a long-term perspective but it is important to focus on the present,” said the premier. "We should give people hope," he said and added that China will be fully committed to its declared target.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moo, speaking before the world leaders, struck a sunny note at odds with the gloominess expressed by other world leaders.

“The finish line is in sight. Our discussion is bearing fruit," he said, calling for political courage, wisdom and conscience. "The world is watching, and we are closer than ever.”

12/18/09 7:59 AM EST

My earlier post -- reporting that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao had canceled a one-on-one scheduled for later today -- was incorrect, the result of miscommunication in an e-mail with a source who thought I was referring to Wen's earlier boycott of a multinational meeting that included Obama.

Wen had a "productive" meeting with Obama for about 55 minutes,

The pool report, via Helene Cooper of the Times:

President Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met for 55 minutes in a room at the Bella Center, and “made progress,” a White House official said. That meeting broke up a little after 1:35 p.m. Copenhagen time.

The official called the discussion “constructive,” and said that the two men touched on all of the three issues which Mr. Obama raised during his speech: emissions goals from all key countries, verification mechanism, and financing.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Wen asked their negotiators to get together one-on-one after the meeting, as well as with other countries, “to see if an agreement can be reached,” the White House official said.

Asked if the two had achieved a breakthrough, the official said “they took a step forward and made progress.”

12/18/09 3:39 AM EST

Overnight reports that world leaders had agreed an a tentative final climate change deal in Copenhagen were greatly exaggerated -- and the outcome of the COP 15 conference was still very much up in the air at 9:01 a.m local time when Air Force One touched down on the tarmac.

Negotiators, weary and frustrated, described a process that still involved the nibbling of policy appetizers at a time when prior conferences were already on to the coffee and dessert of their valedictory speeches.

They warned that none of the several drafts circulating in Copenhagen represented even the bones of a final deal, with many key issues still in flux with time running out.

Moreover, U.S. predictions that roadblocks could be thrown up by smaller countries seemed to be coming true, with last-minute objections voiced by Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, according to people familiar with talks.

"There are deep differences in opinion and views on how we should solve this. We'll try our best, until the last minutes of this conference," Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told reporters as overnight talks ended.

Negotiators from nearly 200 nations, working round-the-clock, did agree to a broad mandate to cap the global temperature from pre-industrial levels at two degrees Celsius. But there was no deal on emissions caps or specific carbon cuts, according to officials briefed on the talks.

The talks good get a jump start when President Obama arrives at the Bella Center to meet with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, one of 120 other world leaders attending the largest -- and most fractious -- global warming confab in history.

One key sticking point: A demand by industrialized nations that the document produced here be legally binding, the so-called "operational" agreement Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke about yesterday.

Developing countries, led by China, India and the African Union, still seemed unwilling to sign off a final document, despite a new deal sweetener that could add as much as $30 billion to the $100 billion-per year international fund for poor nations by 2020 outlined by Clinton on Thursday.

An official with a developing nation told Reuters that rich nations were offering to cut their carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, a proposal that had been rejected by developing nations. Developing nations have always insisted on the need for mid-term targets.

"The situation is desperate," said a top Indian negotiator told the wire service. "There is no agreement on even what to call the text - a declaration, a statement or whatever. They (rich nations) want to make it a politically binding document which we oppose."

And the U.S. was still wrestling with China and India over international monitoring of their emissions cuts, a sticking point that ground the entire conference to a halt early Thursday.

Danes monitored the progress of Obama's arrival obsessively, with cabbies craning at dashboard TV sets to monitor the approach of Air Force One from distant dot to Obama's arrival.

The president quickly hopped into his motorcade for a huddle with Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen, the president of the conference and to deliver a brief speech to the plenary session sometime around 11 a.m.